You Have got to be kidding me. 1. How many here "can" afford to pay there health insurance premiums? (this is a question I would like to see at the top of this post)2. How many pay for there own health care coverage? (yep this one too)3. How many have there employer paying part of there health care? (this one too)4. How many have no health care coverage because it cost way to much? (also)I'm on Face book and every now and then I get asked,sent, these very stupid questions about political and other things. Problem is they are slanted to one side, and I hate slanted, walking up hill just pisses me off.The problem with health care is the "GD" middle man. "GD" middleman makes more money than the Doctors, Nurses, other health care workers combined.So you work for somebody that helps pay your health care bill, thats good, it's not going to last much longer but it's good for now. How many times has your employer changed insurance companies? If you say none well your either way out of the loop or you haven't been reading what they send you in the mail.

Short story; My mom and Dad had insurance through Dads work. We would go and get our annual check-ups once a year (Mom, Dad, 4 boys) shots you know the works at the family docs, nice guy, office in his house with nurse and clerical worker. No waiting and no rush either. Ok now we are all done with the check-ups, time to pay, lady ask for dad's insurance card and dad says to here, "Here is my card but I want to pay cash so my premiums don't go up, she says thats fine 56 dollars please (yep that was for all of us) and that was that. Now that was some years ago, but money is still money, it's just that today we have to pay a "GD" middle man too. Ask your parents about the past, might be surprised.

Banks have made a bundle this last year. Do you hear any Insurance companies saying there hurting for cash? Have your rates went up with the economy down? We better figure something out with this health care system before it gets a whole lot worse not better.Or I take it you think that the Insurance companies are doing a great job, well surprise there not.

One last thing. Whats a better idea? Lets hear some ideas for a solution to the problem.

The single biggest problem with health care in the US is the goal of the system is to see if we can achieve immortality. No one lives forever. When we understand that then we can fix health care. Until we understand that we will never fix health care.

I'm not disputing the facts; I'm just hurling the typical political brickbats.

As Chuck Grassley said last summer, "Grandma should be worried." But, of course, any old person should be worried about his/her last illness. You are completely right that our inability as a society to know when to accept that has become horrendously expensive.

It can't be a coincidence that, as we boomers reach the age where illnesses start to proliferate, the entire system has become too financially heavy to bear.

But woe to anybody who confronts that question in the open, as the opposition whips out the "death panel" glossary.

stockingfull wrote:As Chuck Grassley said last summer, "Grandma should be worried." But, of course, any old person should be worried about his/her last illness. You are completely right that our inability as a society to know when to accept that has become horrendously expensive.

Grandma's going to die. No health care system is going to stop that.

The question is does she die next week and we spend $10K keeping her comfortable?

Or is she going to die in 4 weeks, have no idea who she or anyone around her is, and we're going to spend $350K giving her 3 extra weeks of life that she has no idea she lived?

But either way, at the end of the day, Grandma is dead.

That's why the health care system is broke. Everything else is a red herring.

ErikLaurence wrote:Grandma's going to die. No health care system is going to stop that.

That's tough decision having had to make it recently, we did it because it was the right thing to do. On the other hand my brother was diagnosed with an agressive brain tumor with a very low survival rate and was given a year to live.... I believe it was same thing Kennedy had and you know how fast he went. 5 years later he's in better health than me and has excellent outlook for the foreseeable future but that can really change at any time.

That's where applying the numbers and the "death panels" becomes a problem.

ErikLaurence wrote:Grandma's going to die. No health care system is going to stop that.

That's tough decision having had to make it recently, we did it because it was the right thing to do. On the other hand my brother was diagnosed with an agressive brain tumor with a very low survival rate and was given a year to live.... I believe it was same thing Kennedy had and you know how fast he went. 5 years later he's in better health than me and has excellent outlook for the foreseeable future but that can really change at any time.

That's where applying the numbers and the "death panels" becomes a problem.

Young people with brain tumors are a much better bet than old sick people. Old sick people will die relatively soon no matter what we do and how much we spend. If you successfully deal with the brain tumor in a 40 year old you have given someone another 40 years of life. It's worth spending a few hundred thousand dollars on a 40 year old with a brain tumor, it's not worth spending a few hundred thousand dollars on a 72 year old with a brain tumor.

The problem is MOST people go through a couple of hundred thousand dollars of health care in their last few weeks of life. Most of that health care does not appreciably extend their lives, and medicare pays for most of it.

I can get it anywhere and it's good everywhere, I can decide on my level of coverage and in some states, whether I want to have it or not.

I can honestly say, until I popped a disc in my neck when I was in my mid 30's, I didn't "need" health insurance and for several years, didn't have it.

Only when I got married and started having kids did I REALLY need it. And even then, under a system that isn't Federally subsidized at every level, the costs wouldn't be what they are so I might not need it at all.

People seem to think if we went to a different system, the costs would remain the same. It's not necessarily true.

My wife has an old family friend in Germany. She's 87 and has some sort of cardiac artery blockage, for which they won't treat her surgically because of her age.

Germany has had baseline universal socialized medicine since before WWI, way before Hitler. Other of my wife's neighbors there pay a lot extra for upgraded coverage. Maybe that can make a "no" into a "yes." But what's wrong with that?

There are two issues here. One is the classic issue of gracefully accepting the end. The other is juxtaposing that with the amazing recent advances in so many areas, particularly oncology and cardiac care (which affect such a multitude of these decisions).

Clearly, we have to husband our medical resources, and it ought to be done rationally, based on good and up-to-date science. But remember how quickly it got nasty last summer when the "death panels" came into the debate?

Wow fellas I guess my insurance should be the cheapest of anyone on here then since I do have a living will and I do have it that there will be no resuscitation once I'm gone leave me be. So everybody belly up and sign the waiver so insurance can be cheap while we are living a normal life. Yea like thats really going to happen and even if everyone did sign up for the right to die then the insurances would just jump for joy raise, the premiums anyway just because they can.Here in Michigan my car insurance cost the same as it did in Pennsylvania. there is a big difference though to how the coverage works, first thing that they ask here is do you have health insurance because out here thats what pays any hospital bills not the car insurance. if you don't have health insurance from work or cobra or what ever then you pay a much higher rate but it's not so called health insurance for everyday it's just health insurance for if you get in an accident. the other difference is there is no limit out here to what the insurance has to pay.I don't care if they pass a bill or not the rates are going to sky rocket. there is only one way that rates will go down and thats if we all die.Insurance companies used to make money just from your premiums and investing that money. Now that is still how they do it but in a much more risky manner, and they loose and loose a lot and they pay the top clowns way to much. I really think that what they do is go to Vegas and play craps anymore.

jeromemsn wrote:Wow fellas I guess my insurance should be the cheapest of anyone on here then since I do have a living will and I do have it that there will be no resuscitation once I'm gone leave me be.

I would be very much in favor of a huge health insurance break for people with living wills specifying that no extraordinary efforts be made to extend life.